About NEIHP

The Northeast Instream Habitat Program (NEIHP) is a multidisciplinary research initiative that aims to improve the sustainable management of running waters in the northeastern U.S. Our goal is to develop ecologically-sound methodologies for riverine habitat assessment and to effectively predict the consequences of river modifications using computer modeling. Many states currently face problems in river management due to hydrological alterations that cause dramatic seasonal reductions in flow and lead to the deterioration of fisheries and populations of other aquatic fauna. Federal and state resource agencies are seeking management tools that will enable them to predict the biological consequences of modifications, such as water withdrawals and channel alterations, as well as restoration scenarios (e.g. dam removals) for an entire watershed. River managers are also in need of techniques to identify the water resource requirements for maintaining ecological integrity. Our program responds to these demands while focusing on the issue of water quantity.

River restoration planning demands tools capable of quantifying the consequences of flow and channel modification at various temporal and spatial scales. NEIHP focuses on developing an efficient habitat assessment approach to analyze functional relationships between river biota and their physical environment at the watershed scale. We use a habitat modeling approach, called MesoHABSIM, for instream habitat assessment. This has the potential to facilitate significant improvements in watershed management. MesoHABSIM can be used to establish a regional river habitat database incorporating detailed river habitat data from watersheds throughout the northeastern U.S. NEIHP is using MesoHABSIM to address a number of research tasks including the development of a numeric model of reference habitat conditions and an impact simulator with guidance for the identification of ecological thresholds for target aquatic communities.

In order to meet the challenge of evaluating watersheds in the northeast, NEIHP has enlisted the support of federal and state agencies such as the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the US Environmental Protection Agency, the National Park Service, the MA Department of Conservation and Recreation, the MA Department of Fish and Game, the MA Department of Environmental Protection, the CT Department of Environmental Protection, the NH Department of Environmental Services, the RI Department on Environmental Management, and the VT Department of Fish and Wildlife. In addition, we collaborate with NGOs such as American Rivers, The Nature Conservancy, Trout Unlimited and the Pomperaug River Watershed Coalition in order to acheive our goals.
Advisory Committee Members